PNNL Scientist Receives Early Career Research Award
A bioinformaticist from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will receive an Early Career Research Award from DOE to advance his research identifying proteins that could be used in biofuel production. PNNL's Sam Payne will receive a grant totaling $2.5 million over five years. For more information, see the PNNL News Center.
Annotating Plague with Proteogenomics
Strains of bacteria from the genus Yersinia are infectious and virulent: Y. pseudotuberculosis causes intestinal distress, and Y. pestis causes the plague. To better understand and potentially design ways to mitigate Yersinia's effects on human health, researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the J. Craig Venter Institute, and the University of Texas Medical Branch took on the task of refining the genome maps of three Yersinia strains.
Human Skin Model Shows Signaling Pathway Effects from Low Dose Exposure
In studies on a human skin tissue model, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used a systems biology approach to show that an ionizing radiation dose mimicking that received during a CT scan is sufficient to alter genes in two cell layers. The epidermis is the outer skin layer, and the dermis is beneath it. The researchers found 1452 genes altered in the dermis and 428 genes altered in the epidermis. Genes altered in the two layers showed little overlap, but the affected signaling pathways were similar.
Proteomics Identifies Targets of Ionizing Radiation in a Human Skin Model
How better to find out what effect ionizing radiation has on human skin than by using the real thing? Researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory did that by performing a quantitative mass spectrometry study on a reconstituted human skin tissue model to identify areas affected by ionizing radiation exposure. Their results suggest that even very low doses of ionizing radiation activate cell-signaling pathways, resulting in altered protein phosphorylation and possibly altered protein function.
Study Dusts Sugar Coating Off Little-Known Regulation In Cells
In Alzheimer's disease, brain neurons become clogged with tangled proteins. Scientists suspect these tangles arise partly due to malfunctions in a little-known regulatory system within cells. Now, researchers have dramatically increased what they know about this particular regulatory system in mice. Such information will help scientists better understand Alzheimer's and other diseases in humans and could eventually provide new targets for therapies.
